“It was a June day when I began my career as a national journalist. I stepped into the Detroit Bureau of The Wall Street Journal and started on what would be a long, varied, rewarding career. I was 23 years old, and the year was 1970,” Walt Mossberg writes for The Verge. “That’s not a typo.”
“So it seems fitting to me that I’ll be retiring this coming June, almost exactly 47 years later,” Mossberg writes. “I’ll be hanging it up shortly after the 2017 edition of the Code Conference, a wonderful event I co-founded in 2003 and which I could never have imagined back then in Detroit.”
“I didn’t make this decision lightly or hastily or under pressure. It emerged from months of thought and months of talks with my wise wife, my family, and close friends,” Mossberg writes. “It wasn’t prompted by my employer or by some dire health diagnosis.”
“It just seems like the right time to step away,” Mossberg writes. “I’m ready for something new.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: While we had the odd issue with Mossberg’s review style at points over the years, we wish him nothing but the best and a long and happy retirement!
Walt is the Siskel & Ebert of tech reviewers rolled into one. The ultimate authority. We’ll miss him!
This is the end of an era, for sure.
Good luck and much health and happiness in your future endeavors, Mr. Mossberg!
Walt, thank you for your insight over the years and for a job well done.
Agree with MDN, enjoy your well deserved retirement.
Great job and a great career, Mr. Mossberg.
OK to move on to something new, and do fun/creative things. Maybe stuff you never got to do because of family and career considerations. Never good to simply retire, whither & die away. Feel lucky if you’re a creative imaginative spirit who will never be at a loss of things to do with the remainder of your life. Have fun Walt and thanks for the tech memories.
Great pal. Thanks
But honestly, it was about time. The AAPL needle will have one less activator based on (lately) solely emotion.
Walt wrote a column in the early 2000s about one of the very first iMacs, in which he stated clearly how superior the Mac was for one who just wanted a computer that worked and was not at risk to the many viruses that were proliferating then. His column inspired me to return to Apple products and to buy Apple stock. He made me think about the value of a fully integrated computer that included a design to block viruses and how such a computer, with 1% market share, might grow versus others that did not have this unique feature. He helped me be able to retire bit early. As did Steve Jobs. Thank you Walt. Happy Trails to You!
Walt has been a net friend and a reasonable voice out there over the years. I’ve not always agreed with his take on things, but I never found him to write much that was unconsidered. He thought about his opinions and reviews carefully before he published. I always cared about what he had to say, especially when it was (on occasion) not 100% praiseworthy of Apple. It just made his praise of Jobs and the company he created all the more authentic.
I don’t know why I remember this moment so well, but way back in the late 90’s when I first made contact with him, it was over a non-techie comment he made on CNBC. He had just finished a review of something from Apple (I don’t even remember what that was!) and heard that the CEO of Dole (the Fruit Company) was going to be on immediately following him. He asked the main guy interviewing him and holding down the desk if he could stick around and ask the CEO a question. The anchor said, “absolutely.”
So they go to commercial and when they come back, we see 3 talking heads: Walt, the CNBC anchor, and the CEO of Dole. The anchor introduces the CEO and says something like, “Hey, before we begin our interview, Walt Mossberg from the Wall Street journal has asked if he can ask you a question.” The CEO says, “Sure.” And then out of the blue, TV magic happens.
Walt starts talking about the damn stickers that are suddenly all over his fruit and wondered what the wisdom was about it, since it damages the fruit and he’s always peeling it off and basically hated it. Well, the CEO of Dole turned pale. He bumbled though some answer about how it helped track the fruit, etc.., but you could tell that he was dying inside and was totally unprepared for the question. Walt wasn’t rude or anything, but it was a reasonable question and it was like he was speaking for the common man. The average person who was not really benefiting from having stickers all over their fruit.
Anyway, he signed off the CEO bumbled though the rest of his CNBC interview and apparently the phones and net just lit up. Everyone was praising Walt for bringing this up and they just loved watching how it all went down. Memes didn’t exist at that point, the internet was still young, but I took that moment to write to Walt about it and he was kind enough to reply and say he too was rather surprised by the big and positive reaction his comments had garnered.
We’ve kept in touch now then since then and I’ve always found him to be a very generous person with his comments to those far less well known than he.
I always thought he and David Pogue should do some weekly tech review show and wonder where he can be found in the future. It’s hard to imagine he would stop writing. 🙂
Pretty sure there’s an old-man 3-way w/ Leo Laporte and John C. Dvorak in the works..
Re: MDN take
“The ultimate authority”.
“Authority” who doesn’t know anything specific about computers.